LORD PENRITYN.
IT is easier to judge Lord Penrhyn now that he is dead than it was when he was alive. His relations with his quarrymen were constantly cutting across the received doctrines as to the relation of employers to workmen. Of late years Trade-Unions in the abstract have been the objects of a great deal of just praise. It is recognised that if they support a atrike now and again, they prevent more than they encourage. Unless we are prepared to maintain that employers are invariably anxious to consider the men's interest before their own, we cannot but admit the need of organisation among workmen as the only means of meeting similar organisation among masters. The public may dismiss these wise reflections when a strike is actually in progress, but it may be trusted to recall them when it is over. Lord Penrhyn was a serious obstacle to the com- placent acceptance of these comfortable generalities. He was a good employer, careful of the welfare of his workmen, perfectly just in his dealings with them, considerate of their interest when circumstances not of their own making were against them. Fifty years ago he would have been regarded as a model employer. And yet his name has been chiefly associated with an exceptionally long and embittered trade dispute. The Bethesda quarries are famous in the history of Trade-Unionism. Lord Penrhyn was victorious, as in the circumstances he could hardly fail to be. He knew his own purpose, he was prepared to make any sacrifice rather than forego it, and he had the command of great financial resources. Most trade quarrels are ended by surrender or compromise. In the Bethesda case neither party yielded. There was a plain issue of principle between them, and each held their own to the last. Lord Penrhyn would not employ men who wanted to negotiate with him through the officials of their Tinion. His quarrymen refused to negotiate with him by 4,ny other agents. They parted company in the end with no concession on either side. Lord Penrhyn found other men to work his quarries, while those originally employed by him found subsistence elsewhere, either in their own or in some other trade. While the feud was going on he was perhaps the best-hated man in England, the very repre- sentative of all that was harsh and tyrannical in his treatment of those whom misfortune had made his victims. And yet all the time he was actin., on what he held to be the only sound principle on which' the relations of master and workman could rest,—the principle of free contract between the two parties arrived at by personal negotiation between them. There was no unwillingness on Lord Penrhyn's part to listen to the men's grievances. He was ready to consider every complaint, and to give full reasons for his action in regard to them. But those complaints must be individually presented to him. He would have nothing to say to Committees or to Union officials. He ignored the long controversy which had ended in the virtual acceptance of negotiation between the representa- tives of employers and workmen as the ordinary means of bringing trade disputes to a conclusion. His theory of his own position towards the men in his quarries was a combina- tion of individualism and feudalism. In the first instance their relation was one of pure contract. But when once the contract had been entered into Lord Penrhyn became something more than the mere employer of labour at a fixed wage and for a definite term. He cared for his men in something of the spirit of the feudal superior. He recognised that absolute submission on their side consti- tuted a title to consideration and kindness on his. Thus the furious anger which his action in the Bethesda strike aroused, not only in the actual sufferers, but in thousands of workmen all over the country, is quite compatible with the resolutions in which the men now employed in the quarries declare that they have lost in him" a true friend." That is precisely what he was to those who would accept his friendship on his own terms. From those terms he would tolerate no departure. That they were unusual, that they were inconsistent with the whole tendency of modern ideas, was nothing to him. He had long ago made up his mind what the true relation of master to men was, and if employers all around him were led astray by new and unsound notions on this point, that was only an additional reason why he should stand firm. What the world thought harshness was, in his eyes, the only true kindness. To be other than harsh would be to encourage working men to enter upon a course which must in the end bring disaster to all concerned. That was not an encouragepaent which they should ever have to blame him for giving them.
It is sad that intentions so good and dispositions so kindly should have made Lord Penrhyn's business career one long record of strife and illwill. But sad as it is, it is perfectly intelligible. Lord Penrhyn's virtues were those of another generation—we may almost say of another age— and virtues to be of any value must have some connexion with the time and circumstances in which they are practised. It is useless for a single man to set himself against the whole current of affairs. The more he succeeds in what he has undertaken, the more hopelessly out of keeping with his environment he is seen to be. There are cases in which the attempt is heroic, because its object is to call back to life a state of things the disappearance of which is an object of genuine regret. This cannot be said of Lord Penrhyn's ideal. The old relation of master and workman had a beauty of its own, but it was a beauty which needed for its development the small communities, the rigidly limited Guilds, of mediaeval Europe. When it was transplanted into larger societies it lost its old sanctions and its old safeguards. It was no longer kept in check by a public opinion which tried and sentenced men in accordance with definite rules and well-understood standards. The employer was independent because he was strong. He made his own terms because those to whom he offered them had no choice but to accept them. When he cared for the men he employed he had ample opportunities of serving them. He was their earthly providence in times when they bad no other. Some of these instances have found their way into history, and have helped to create an impression which is accurate so far as it goes. But how far is that ? What do we know of the un- numbered instances in which the employer was overbearing, covetous, and, where opportunity offered, cruel ? What we do know is that men cannot now be trusted to deal justly by others unless these others are able to negotiate with them on something like equal terms, and we can infer from this what must have happened when no such equality existed. Lord Penrhyn's attitude was that of a man who can trust himself to do right, and forgets that restrictions which he thinks useless as well as irksome are necessary for average humanity. The position to which Trade-Unions have now attained may not be wholly a gain to society. They are the possessors of large powers, and they do not, any more than other people, always use them wisely. But as the progress of society is the progress of the several classes which compose it, it cannot be well that the advance of one class should have no parallel in the advance of others. If there were no Trade-Unions, if the capitalist were subject to no restraints save such as are imposed on him by his own good feeling, if he had but to offer such wages as he thought fit in the certainty that in the end they would be accepted because the alternative to acceptance was starvation, is it conceivable that the condition of the English working man would be what it is ? Yet it was to this end that Lord Penrhyn's efforts were really directed. It was not consciously his end. On the contrary, his desire was to give his workmen the position he thought best for them. What sort of a position it would be for other workmen if he suc- ceeded in making the exception the rule, how far all employers could be trusted to use Lord Penrhyn's powers in Lord Penrhyn's way, probably never occurred to him. In his worship of freedom of contract be forgot what little meaning the words have for men to whom want of organisation stands for want of power to make terms for themselves. The fact that Lord Penrhyn's conception of the employer's function and duty was in itself high, and. even generous, should not blind us to the fact that its adoption on a large scale would have been the undoing of a revolution which has on the whole greatly advanced the sum of human happiness.
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